Just finished my EE playthrough(tactician), wanted to share some thoughts. Some minor spoilers ahead.
Disclaimer: despite some shortcomings listed below I loved the game, wouldn't sink 80 hours into a bad one.
Combat is way too easyThe first 3 encounters are great, you have to put some thought in them(maybe specifically choose backgrounds with molotov/fireball to make it easier on yourself).
After you get your full 4 man team the challenge is mostly gone if you do not intentionally gimp yourself. Around lvl 6 I've decided to drop all charms and freezing touch/shocking touch/bitter cold because fighting training dummies isn't very fun(ice wall stays, it's too powerful but the most awesome spell in the game tied with earthquake :)).
Even without cc, dual wield warrior can just ultramurder all bosses in round 1 even without earthquake setup. Same with oath/soulsap/boint blank arrow spray ranger.
One boss that I feel had his toughness in the right place was the guardian, granted he probably wasn't meant to be killed without wand and at lvl13 I didn't have soulsap/decaying touch on anyone.
The story/banter annoyed me quite a bitI enjoy a good rpg story as much as the next guy(Fallout 1-2 and Deus Ex 1 are all time greats, liked the atmosphere of Vampire Bloodlines).
I liked some of the humor in this one, the animal dialogues often cracked me up and the rps minigame options were things I could actually see myself saying for both sides. Still, the babble about souls, guardians, soulforges, source, souls, source, source, guardians, souls, source, source got annoying real fast. The last 2 hours contained roughly 1.9 hours of 'THIS IS IT GUARDIANS, FEEL THE GRANDEUR OF THIS MOMENT' and 0.1 of me running up to the bosses and bonking them in the face.
Special mention for Leandra and her D3 method of villainy(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcJ_XT3oWtY&feature=youtu.be&t=70 ), so friggin aggravating to just watch her run away ~5 different times.
Holy everloving hell are the puzzles tediousI didn't mind some of them, for example the immaculate trial ones are quick and intuitive enough(and I wasn't as annoyed with puzzles yet).
I really hated the pixelscans, when before Mangoth a rat said something about buttons on the walls I knew I was in for an hour of aggravation, after 5 minutes just looked it up online.
By phantom forest I just wanted to see the ending, battles were a joke so sticked 100% fire/poison resist and burning immunity on everyone and simply plowed through traps and lava. Entering the source temple was still annoying as hell, for me the lowest point in the entire game was the kindergarten level match-the-shapes puzzle with the 3 camouflaged statues.
Please partake in the plumpest pro-du-ce e-ver PRO-DU-CEDDIE INFERNAL WENCH!!!!!!
Great crafting system, drops are really badCrafting is the best I've seen so far in any game, crafted items are great stopgaps and have their niche all game long. Early game had a real blast making grenades/arrows and other associated doodads.
On the other hand drops are entirely useless. They are based on the level of the mob/area, that'll be 1-3 below your level and what you can get in a shop. Some slots are way too random: bracers/belts tend to have a million useless skill mods and in the entire game I've seen 2 weapons that were better than my crafted ones 2 levels lower than them, 1 of them being a unique.
Did they really just use Terry Pratchett's sourcery in an rpg? 
Looking back I really liked the combat system. If this was a game along the lines of fallout tactics(minimal rp, focused on combat with gearing up between missions/encounters) I'd jump right back to try something different. There's no friggin way I'm going through Cyseal and the puzzles another time though
Mobs could use a hefty buff to hp(think x5-10), so anything caught in CC isn't automatically dead in 1 round. Another change I think would be nice is making BB/Will rolls every round(like with slipping) and upping the CD on low level CC spells. This way CC is still massively useful and not too random, plus a bit more meaningful choice if you can't try 5 times every round.
